Crudo by Olivia Laing
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
British (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
what Kathy wanted currently was complicated to explain. She wanted three or four houses so that she could move between them. She was happiest on her travels like a clockwork toy, maybe happiest unpacking or booking a train ticket. She liked to get in and settle down, and she also liked to snap shut the door. She wanted to write another book, obviously, and she wanted to find a way of situating it nowhere. Nowhere like the interior spaces of the body. Nowhere like the dead zones of a city. She was a New Yorker. She wasn't meant to be in Europe. She certainly didn't belong in a damp garden in England. The weeds were alarming. She was terrified of moths and mould. What she really liked was lizards, not just their tiny, dashing feet, but the way they were exceptionally dry. Kathy light, dryness. She'd always been the supplicant. But now that she'd finally got things settled, she was finding an abnormal talent for withholding. As if she'd finally become one of the many men she chased across Berlin, London, San Diego In the 19 nineties, when she was young, she wept and sliced up her own flesh at the blink of an eye. She loved to get truly abject, but now she dried out. She was as cool and brown and flat as a piece of discarded toast. No appetising. Exactly. No desirable but fodder for someone. A pigeon at least was this getting older? Kathy was worried about ageing. She hadn't realised youth wasn't a permanent state. That she wouldn't always be cute and hopeless and forgivable. She wasn't stupid. She was just greedy. She wanted it always to be the first time. When she thought about the people she populated her youth with, she cringed. She could have made it so much more glamorous, so much more debonair. She needn't have had a bowl cut. She needn't have worn dungarees. The minutes were passing. She'd failed to get a death grip on time. Now she was cool but old now she was hot. But ring coot. My life is delicate, more delicate than my ****. She'd written to a boyfriend. Not that long ago. I've had 11 abortions, she told someone else, which wasn't even true. Kathy was always lying shed light and she was a small child with an attractive red hair. When her hair began to fall out because of the stress of living with her mother. She told the girls at school that had been eaten by her rabbit. At that school, they had a playground game where everyone tried to hypnotise themselves and then lift somebody's body with just their little fingers. The girl about to be lifted had to lie flat, and everyone had to press on her as hard as they could. After that, the lifting was easy. Weightlessness was another exclusive possession of the very young. Later on, you started clanking around like tins tied to a car. What Cathy was supposed to be doing was planning her wedding. She did this by looking through pictures on instagram and making unkind comments. That's very vulgar. She or her husband would say, Chairs and tables, napkins that's very vulgar. At this rate, they'd end up getting married in a car park